


Red String of Fate

by LadyKnightSkye



Series: Colors [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Divergent Post-Civil War, F/M, Light Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Bonds, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Various Soulmate Bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 08:45:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12207798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKnightSkye/pseuds/LadyKnightSkye
Summary: James Buchanan Barnes was born with a red String wrapped around his wrist.Quickly, Natalia Romanova realized that her Soulmate was the Winter Soldier.





	Red String of Fate

**Author's Note:**

> The story of Bucky and Nat's own (very subdued) romance. Occurs pre- _Colors_. 
> 
> Also, the idea of Steve Rogers the scrappy, skinny stray cat is now irrevocably part of how I will write the character. Just saying.

James Buchanan Barnes had had a red string tied around his wrist since he was a baby. With the innocence of a child, he had never realized that he was different from other children in that way. He thought everyone had a red string only they could see around their wrists, and it wasn’t until he was six years old and solidly enamored of the raging ball of anger and fluff that was Steven Grant Rogers that he realized this was not so. The two met after Steven had engaged in a scrappy fight with the neighborhood bullies, even though he was 1) completely alone, and 2) half their size. Bucky, as he was already called, fell into a deep platonic love with Stevie after watching him put up more of a fight than any twenty-five pound, asthmatic, scoliosis-ridden five year-old really should. 

The two were inseparable, and it was Steve who opened Bucky’s eyes to the different Soul Bonds. “I don’t have a String,” Steve had said one day not long after they met. 

Bucky had frowned. “You don’t?”

“No,” Stevie said, shaking his head back and forth, causing his blond hair to flop all around. “I don’t have a Bond yet. Mama hopes that I get one by the time I’m ten. Sometimes that happens.”

“Oh,” Bucky said, looking down at his right wrist. “I have a red String. Is that normal?”

Steve crinkled his nose. “I don’t know. Anyway, I wouldn’t be able to see the color. I’m colorblind.”

“You’re what?”

“Colorblind. I can’t see any colors.”

Bucky had been appalled. Then he was determined. “I’ll teach them to you!”

Stevie didn’t have the heart to tell him that all the teaching in the world wouldn’t cure his colorblindness, but he didn’t want to run off his one friend. Later, Bucky would realize that he had lucked out. As he grew older, Steve became less and less open to new people, and Mrs. Barnes once remarked to Mrs. Rogers that Steve had developed the disposition of an out of sorts alley cat. Mrs. Rogers loved her son, but she agreed that he reminded her of Mr. Sunshine, the tenement’s resident stray. Mr. Sunshine was a scrawny orange tabby that had a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas and the temper of a rabid badger. 

Bucky would never admit it, but there may have been a time or two that he referred to Steve as Mr. Sunshine. To his face. 

And Steve might have dropped him with a well placed punch. To his face.

However, Bucky loved his friend, and stood by him no matter what. He stood by him when he was a scrawny scrapper, then as Captain America. He stood by Steve even when he could have been sent home, could have escaped the hell that was western Europe. Bucky stood by Steve up until the moment when he was falling, falling, falling . . .

~~

Strings are hard to sever, but as with all middling psychic Bonds, they can be denied. A person can be told enough times that there is no red String around their wrist, and eventually they’ll stop seeing it. Remember, the String is only a manifestation of a Bond, not a physical object. Tell a person they’re Mateless enough, and they’ll believe. Oh, they’ll believe.

It’s funny though, even though the Winter Soldier was told repeatedly that he had no Soulmate, he did meet a little girl with red hair the same color as her String. The String that pulled taut every time she approached the Soldier. They never touched skin to skin, but the little girl knew the truth.

Little Natalia Romanova’s Soulmate was the Winter Soldier.  
~~

He first noticed it when he moved into the Avengers Compound. His doctors were optimistic about his recovery, and his therapists thought he was ready to begin interacting with people on a wider scale. He had the run of the place, but usually kept to his room. Sometimes he sat with Wanda and Scott, the two happy to have a third person for games of Go Fish and Uno. Sometimes though, when he laughed and joked, he would notice a red flash on his right wrist. When he did, sometimes he would see Wanda eyeing him speculatively. 

It was almost a month before he saw it for real. Wanda was brushing his hair when he looked down and saw the red String pulling taut on his wrist. He cocked his head, and Wanda stopped her sisterly ministrations. “Bucky?”

“I have a red String,” he murmured. “I thought . . . When I started to remember, I thought that I still didn’t have it because my Soulmate had already died.”

Wanda put the brush back to his long hair. “Maybe it wasn’t so much that your Soulmate was gone as it was you believing in yourself. HYDRA took so many things from you. Your Bond was another casualty, at least until you made peace with yourself. The Bond has always been there, you just needed to heal up a bit before you saw it again.”

“And how would you know?” he said, looking up to her with a squinty look.

She scrunched up her nose at him. “Mind powers remember? I can see psychic Bonds. Telepathy and Empathy looks kind of shimmery around people’s heads, but I can see Strings clearly. The entire time I’ve known you, the String has been there.”

“But . . . I couldn’t see it . . .”

Wanda sighed. “The funny thing is, people talk about ‘breaking’ bonds, but all they’re doing is denying the bond, not truly breaking it. Someone who ‘breaks’ a String Bond is only fooling their own mind into thinking it’s not there. As long as they don’t fulfill the Bond, it’s like it never was there to begin with.”

“So, my Soulmate is still alive,” he stated. “And the String is getting taut. Usually it just . . . hangs there.”

A satisfied smile crossed Wanda’s face. “You know what that means don’t you?”

Bucky continued to stare at his wrist, before deciding to get up from his perch on the floor. Wanda sat back, and didn’t say a word as he went hunting.

~~

Nat knew something was up the moment the String went taut on her wrist. She couldn’t help but tense, since the last couple of times that had happened had not ended well. She had made a special effort to avoid being near her Soulmate, mostly out of respect for the fact that the man was healing from a traumatic 70 years of existence. He did not need her to further complicate things. 

She turned from where she had been running through her usual warm up routine to find Bucky Barnes standing behind her. His face was set into a curious expression. His eyes were wide, his mouth a grim line, and his cheeks were dusted with a light pink color. She set her hands on her hips with a cocked head. “Can I help you?”

“Natalia.”

Her carefully manicured smile froze. “So, you finally remember.”

He shook his head. “I’ve known for awhile now. I remember you, little doll.”

She smiled at his affectionate nickname for her. “Big Bear.”

Bucky’s mouth turned up into a small smile. He held up his right wrist, and Nat could see the red String of fate tied around his wrist. “I know I’m no catch, but . . .” he sighed, and then continued, “But I seem to be Bonded to you.”

She held up her own left wrist, the String pulled tight between them. She snorted lightly. “I’m no catch either.”

He looked her up and down. “You’ve grown up to be more beautiful than I could have imagined back then.”  
No blush graced her cheek, but Nat felt suddenly shy. The Winter Soldier had been a strict trainer, but not unkind. Many of her fellow trainees had fallen a little in like with him. “Thank you.”

“Just the truth,” he murmured, taking another step forward.

She let him approach, knowing that what came next was inevitable, but a good kind of inevitable. “Love is for children,” she said suddenly.

A flash of the old Bucky Barnes, the ladykiller with an easy charm, came to the fore. “Keep telling yourself that. Maybe you’ll finally believe it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked as she began to circle him. 

He didn’t let her out of his sight, pivoting easily to keep pace with her. “You’re full of love. Steve’s told me about you. So has Clint. You don’t love often, it seems, but once someone is part of your family, you will do anything for them.”

She stopped, but she wasn’t shaken by his words. She expected nothing less. Instead of prolonging the inevitable, she took one last step forward, and grabbed Bucky’s right hand in her left. The red String pulsed, and turned a bright gold. “Wanna go out for dinner?” she asked him softly.

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’d love to.”  
~~

Theirs wasn’t a grand romantic story. Instead, it was months of proximity and discovery as they lived together as Soulmates. Bucky continued to work with his doctors and therapists to recover from his trauma, and Natasha continued to clear the red from her ledger. Six months passed before Bucky was deemed fit to help the Avengers, and then he and Natasha became truly inseparable. They fought together, they ate together, and they trained together. All the while, their golden String pulsed between them.

A year passed, and Natasha looked up one day while they sat on the floor of their apartment cleaning guns. “You’re right.”

“About what?”

“Love isn’t just for children, big bear.”

He smiled then, bright and beautiful. “I love you too, little doll.”


End file.
